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3 Copyright (c) 2003 by Jon S. Gieber MS, CADC II All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher: Amber Geiger 3630 NE 10th Avenue Portland, OR Cover illustration by Faith Geiger.

4 Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction 11 Who should read this book? 11 What qualifies the author to write this book? 12 How will this book specifically help counselors, help addicts? 13 How is the APS different from other counseling approaches? 14 What exactly is goal of the APS? 15 Why write this book now? 17 What is the current relationship between priest and shaman on the addiction counseling terrain?20 Are the priest right? Is LoC a myth? 23 Is there contempt between the priest and the Shaman? 27 How does this work address LoC? 28 An invitation to priest and shaman 30 Key Concepts 31 Sources 32 Chapter 1: Foundations 35 Slaying the Dragon 35 Essential Truths 37 Authority 38 Experience 40 Intuition 41 Science 41 Legal Process 43 The New Paradigm 45 Addiction is a disease 46 iii

10 Acknowledgements Why me? I often ask myself. Why did I wake up from my addiction? After I realized on that early Sunday morning that the paranoia telling me that those men had shot guns and that they were coming to kill me was from the cocaine, after I realized that I was hopeless by myself and that I needed help, I turned to you. You understood that I was desperate. You didn t scoff at me like the psychiatrist who told me I sounded fine to him, that I was somehow trying to rip off the system, who yelled at me before finally slamming down the receiver in my ear. You didn t dismiss me like one counselor who thought that coming in to chat with him once a week would be enough. You didn t burden me by suggesting that LSD now and then would be my way out of addiction. You listened to me, you believed me. You understood how many times I had tried to stop and that I could never stay stopped. You understood how addiction had corrupted my soul yet you loved me anyway. You knew that the one thing I needed the most was to understand and accept one simple truth: I am an addict. Over 22 years ago you helped me accept this truth; for this, I am eternally grateful. Your face changed during that time: Tom Mann, Jim Creasey, Brad Kearns, Sam Graves, Joann Breeden, and Jo Hodges. Yet your message was constant: accept your powerlessness and reclaim your soul; this is the foundation upon which to build your recovery. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. This book is dedicated to Tom, Jim, Brad, Sam, Joann, and Jo. It is also dedicated to all those counselors who ix

11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS remain solid in their conviction that their primary job with addicts is to help them accept their powerlessness and reclaim their souls. A special thank-you to my parents, Larry and Maureen Gieber, who had the love and wisdom to put me in the hands of those who could help me the most. Their ability to accept and love me despite my cocaine addiction was pivotal in my becoming a recovering person. A final thank-you to my beautiful wife, Janey Gieber. Her constant encouragement, her wisdom, and her soulfulness have all greatly contributed to my evolution as a man, which includes having the courage to write this manual. x

12 Introduction Who should read this book? Helping addicts recover from their disease can be a very humbling and difficult endeavor. There are no magic words, recipes or devices that insure recovery. It can be a very messy business. Counseling addicts is an endeavor that requires a willingness to give witness to often-horrible traumas (albeit second hand) on a daily basis; the raw, gut-wrenching exposure of the realities of addiction can be gruesome. Counselors, who work with addicts will inevitably be confronted with the death of a client they have cared for, hoped for and believed in. Sometimes the death is due to overdose, or a medical complication related to their use, or perhaps the addict s despair is too great for them to manage and they turn to suicide to escape their pain. It takes courage, compassion and conviction to work as an addiction counseling professional. Helping addicts recover from their disease can also be a very exciting and rewarding. Addicts shrouded in the despair and demoralization of their disease often wake up to the reality that the primary source of their problems is their use of mood altering drugs and that they can recover by simply not using. The relief that many addicts experience when they are able to accept their addiction is often instantaneous. Hopelessness is replaced by hope; a guilt and angst give way to forgiveness and grief. Addicts can heal quickly, reclaim their dignity and re-engage in their lives. Helping addicts recover can be a sacred experience as we bear witness to the re-birth of a human being. 11

13 UNVEILING THE ADDICTED HEART This book is intended for anyone who wishes to help people who suffer from addiction: ministers, teachers, social workers, nurses, physicians, and coaches. Simply put, anyone who has contact with addicts is potentially in a position to help them save their own lives. While this text is specifically developed with the addiction counseling professional in mind, the set of knowledge and skills described can be useful to anyone who dares to respond to the pain of an addict. No one should underestimate his or her ability to help change the world for another. A single voice, a gentle, loving willingness to respond to another s pain, can truly provide the opening to a path of healing. What qualifies the author to write this book? Jon Gieber is the Department Chair of the Alcohol and Drug Counselor Department at Portland Community College. He has been a full time faculty member since He entered the addiction counseling profession in In addition to his teaching duties, he has a private practice where he works primarily with addicts. He has served as a consultant and provider to the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners Health Professional Program since its inception in He has earned a BS degree in Psychology and a MS in Counseling from the University of Oregon. He is a Certified Addictions Counselor Level II (Oregon). He has been a recovering addict for over 22 years. Many of his family members are also recovering addicts. The addiction-specific counseling approach he proposes in this text is not based not upon an ivory tower 12

14 INTRODUCTION analysis devoid of real world experience, nor does it arise exclusively from the realm of personal experience, but it comes from a cauldron of over twenty years experience working with addicts (including his own recovery), coupled with careful scrutiny of available scientific information. Most importantly, the ideas in this book have been tested with real clients who suffer from the disease of addiction. How will this book specifically help counselors, help addicts? The intent of this manual is to synthesize the real world experiences of addicts and the scientific understanding of addiction into a counseling approach that is specifically targeted to help addicts address what is referred to in the Twelve Step programs as the first step, We admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable (Alcoholics Anonymous). 1 This counseling approach, called the Anchor Point System (APS), specifically facilitates the exploration of how powerlessness and unmanageability are experienced in the individual addict s life. The APS is a respectful and gentle counseling approach that is simple to understand and employ. The APS honors the reality of addiction and the healing potential of each human heart; it is a path that can be used to help wake the addict up from their prisons of self-deceit and self-destruction. The APS can be used in individual, couple, family and group applications. This book is intended to be a training manual for anyone who works with the addicted popula- 13

15 UNVEILING THE ADDICTED HEART tion. This manual delineates step-by-step the APS. The APS is simple to understand and implement, but, like most counseling techniques, it takes considerable time and practice to master. Creation of videotapes using roleplays that allow the counselor to practice the prescribed skills greatly accelerates mastery of the APS. How is the APS different from other counseling approaches? The APS was developed by combining elements of human experience and scientific inquiry. The core identifying characteristic in the APS model of addiction is loss of control. Loss of control (LoC) is defined as using a substance more than intended or using it despite negative consequences. In the current addiction-specific trainings and counseling approaches, it is rare that they acknowledge LoC as an essential feature of addiction that must be embraced if addiction is to be appropriately understood and treated. The APS will question the appropriateness of traditional confrontational approaches as well as the effectiveness of the currently popular Motivational Interviewing 2 approach. Readers will be asked to consider a paradox that appears in the addiction counseling world: addiction counseling professionals who profess to embrace the reality of addictive disease also endorse an approach (M.I.) that does not consider addictive disease as a valid concept 14

16 and in fact considers the core identifying feature of addiction, the loss of control (LoC) phenomena, to be a myth. What exactly is goal of the APS? INTRODUCTION The APS is an addiction-specific counseling strategy that relies upon the basic counseling skills of accurate empathy coupled with a sophisticated understanding of the LoC experience. The APS uses strategies that help the substance user examine their behavior and values to determine if they have crossed the line into addiction. In many ways, the APS is as much a philosophical approach to counseling as it is a set of specific counseling strategies. The primary philosophical position is that of highly valuing the client s subjective experience and interpretation of their world. This phenomenological orientation results in the counselor s helping the client examine their behavior within their own world-view and not against some external criteria. Motivation is developed as a result of the client s recognition of discrepancies between their behavior and their value system. The APS demonstrates practical strategies that can result in the addicted client acquiring intrinsic motivation to pursue an abstinencebased lifestyle. The APS gives the counselor a means to help the client build a strong foundation for recovery, a foundation built upon enlightened self-interest, not coercion. Given most clients who present for substance abuse issues are there as a result of some extrinsic motivator (judge, spouse, employer, etc), it is vital to avoid strategies that are based on power differentials or any type of confrontation because clients will tend to respond with compliance to this pressure, driving meaningful communication underground. The primary goal of the APS is to 15

17 UNVEILING THE ADDICTED HEART help the individual who is addicted to develop a significant level of intrinsic motivation to pursue recovery; counselors who align themselves with the extrinsic motivators greatly reduce their effectiveness to help the client. Once the intrinsic motivation to pursue recovery has been awakened then a very difficult transition will occur that requires the counselor to use a different set of skills and approaches. Description and exploration of those skills is not the intent of this work and will not be included in this text except to note the common occurrence that recovering addicts report: they feel worse as they get better. Addicts who move into acceptance of their disease often experience despair, disorientation and confusion. It s as if they have been in a dark room and suddenly a bright light is turned on; it takes awhile to adjust to the light and to explore this once familiar room with the benefit of greater vision. The APS helps facilitate the destabilization of the structure that supported their addictive behavior; other approaches need to be used to help the person reconstitute themselves in their recovery. The Anchor Point System can be adapted to almost any counseling situation where increasing consciousness regarding addictive disease is considered appropriate. Although the APS is fairly focused in its emphasis on exploring substance-use concerns, the counselor must have a light grip on this focus and prioritize the development of a trust-based relationship. Trust is built by being able to accurately reflect to the client the content, feelings and meanings of their communications. The counselor must remain responsive and willing to honor the client s process, which is rarely linear and is com- 16

18 monly filled with ambivalence. The APS requires patience! Although the APS can often be used very productively in a short period of time (1 to 3 counseling sessions), each client s unique presentation will dictate the speed at which the APS can be applied. The APS is simple in its intent: to help clients with a substance-use concern accurately identify and articulate their beliefs about their relationship with that substance or substances. The interview is designed to emphasize and examine evidence of LoC. The APS involves specific techniques that were developed to help counselors facilitate a client s movements toward development of intrinsic motivation to address their substance-use concerns. This interview system is compatible with the needs of counselors who must produce documentation utilizing the DSM IV R criteria. Why write this book now? INTRODUCTION A war is being waged against addicts and against treatment for addiction across this country. While the casualties of this war are quietly growing in number, the carnage is very real. Untreated addiction costs lives, destroys families and exponentially grows misery. William White, the author of Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America, predicted that in the new millennium addiction will be de-medicalized and increasingly criminalized for all but the most affluent of our citizens. 3 He supports his vision of the future with the observation that As we approach the 21st century, we have begun the wholesale movement of addicts-particularly poor addicts of color-from treat- 17

19 UNVEILING THE ADDICTED HEART ment programs to the criminal justice system. 4 He describes the underlying dynamic this way,...america is caught in a transition between two addiction paradigms: one that views addiction as a diseased condition emanating from biopsychosocial vulnerability, and the other that views addiction as willful and criminal behavior emanating from flaws of personal character. 5 Across the country, treatment centers are shutting their doors. Those on waiting lists to enter publicly funded facilities can wait months for a placement to open. The treatment centers that remain are increasingly pressured to align with economic forces that shorten stays and emphasize co-morbid diagnoses to maximize benefits. Addiction is increasingly relegated to a secondary concern as counseling staffs are more and more weighted with mental health professionals who have little training or direct experience with addiction. Counselors, recovering from addiction themselves, once the mainstay of treatment centers, have become a diminishing, and at times, an even absent influence. William White s commentary on the differing contributions of the recovering and non-recovering counselors eloquently captures the cost of the recovering counselors demise. The noted mythologist Joseph Campbell often made distinctions between the roles of priests and shaman across different cultures. According to Campbell, priests were social functionaries who derived their legitimacy from social institutions and in turn supported the social order. In contrast, the shaman s legitimacy sprang from his or her passage through 18

20 INTRODUCTION emotional death and rebirth. Where the priest had been prepared by the social order, the shaman was prepared by his or her own personal experience.6 Professionals by education and professionals by experience represent the priests and shaman of the addiction treatment field. For more than 100 years, tension has reigned in the relationship between our field s priest and shaman. That tension stems, in part, from two very different types of knowledge: the knowing of the mind and the knowing of the heart. The former involves the mastery of externally validated truth, while the latter springs from within one s own experiential truth. 7 White, laments the loss of the presence of the recovering counselor....we have lost, silenced, or transformed most of our shaman...recovered and recovering people brought passion and energy to the treatment milieu. They brought a focus on direct service and a deep faith in the possibility of change derived from their own recovery and their participation in a community of recovered and recovering people. In the wake of their declining numbers, the presence of that hope in the field seems to be diminishing. 8 What has accompanied the loss of the recovering counselor has been an erosion of an experienced-based understanding of addiction. More and more, trainings are provided by academics (priests) that are lacking actual experience of working with addiction. It has become increasingly difficult to attend an addiction specific train- 19

21 UNVEILING THE ADDICTED HEART ing that is specific to addiction. The presence of PhD s (who are only rarely recovering or directly experienced with addiction) dominates the training terrain. This book was written at this time to bring back to the addiction-counseling landscape the shaman s voice of experience. The pendulum has swung too far; we have moved from an over dependence on experience to an over-dependence on education devoid of real world experience. We need both the shaman and the priest to best serve addicts. The ideal situation to best serve the addicted client is a staff balanced with both priestly and shamanic influences. A staff with no priest input is much more likely to miss important issues and obstacles, and it is more likely to operate from a one size fits all perspective. A staff with no shaman input is more likely to lose sight of the addiction and be seduced by issues other than those directly related to the addiction. What is the current relationship between priest and shaman on the addiction counseling terrain? The cooperation between priest and shaman has been an important contributor to the evolution of the addiction counseling profession. Consider the relationship between Dr. Harry Tiebout (priest), the psychiatrist who played an important role in the development of Alcoholic Anonymous, and Bill Wilson (shaman), one of the cofounders of AA. Tiebout was instrumental in opening doors so Wilson could make presentations at a New York state medical society meeting and later at a meeting of the 20

22 INTRODUCTION American Psychiatric Association. Bill Wilson s presentation was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Tiebout opened the professional doors through which A.A. s legitimacy was acknowledged by medical and psychiatric authorities. 9 Without Tiebout, or another priest advocate, the doors would have remained closed. A valid criticism has been waged against the over-valuing of shaman in the treatment community. There was certainly a time when recovery alone was considered sufficient criteria to use to hire someone to act as a professional counselor. The section titled Part One: Foundations describes in detail how over-valuing of experience can result in ineffective and even harmful counseling practices. It is important to note that, at least in part, the over-valuing of experience occurred because of the lack of the availability of academic institutions that could prepare professionals to serve as addiction specific counselors. Today, many of the priests who operate at the publishing level, seem to shun and discount the experience of the shaman. Consider the following three examples: 1) A recent text, Alternatives to Abstinence written by Heather Ogilvie, is based upon the following expertise: Until my publisher approached me about writing a book on alternative treatments for alcoholism, I had neither any special expertise in the subject nor any personal experience with alcohol problems

23 UNVEILING THE ADDICTED HEART 2) Consider the often cited and quoted Herbert Fingarette (who has served as the United States representative on addictions to the United Nations) in his book Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease he claims that the reason he is an expert in the fields of addiction is because he has never done any actual research or worked with any actual addicts: thus he is an unbiased observer. 11 3) The reigning high priests in the addiction community are William Miller and Stephen Rollnick, the authors of Motivational Interviewing (MI). 12 Their work has been heartily embraced by addiction counselors and remains one of the most popular trainings to attend in multitrack conferences. Most of the text is very helpful to the addiction counselor and surely contributes to the advancement of the evolution of the addiction counseling technology. However, Motivational Interviewing also contributes to the demise of the addiction paradigm that views addiction as a disease and contributes to the paradigm that views addiction as willful and criminal behavior emanating from flaws of personal character. 13 A core concept embraced by most shamans in the addiction counseling community is that loss of control (LoC) is the central identifying feature of addiction. LoC is defined as using a substance more than intended and using despite negative consequences. Recovering counselors tend to describe LoC in Alcoholics Anonymous terms: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable. Today s priest seems very certain that LoC is a myth. In the case of the 22

24 INTRODUCTION M.I. text, the only reference that the authors make to LoC is a parenthetical one: That is, experiences and behaviors that follow ordinary principles of psychology are mistakenly interpreted as special symptoms indicative of unique addictive pathology (e.g., denial, craving, loss of control). 14 Thus it appears that many of today s priests not only discount the experience that shamans bring but challenge the most fundamental tenet the shamans hold: that they were powerless over their addiction. Are the priests right? Is LoC a myth? The contention that LoC is a myth seems to have wide support. In November 2001, during a meeting of the Oregon Consortium of Addiction Studies Educators one of the attendees proclaimed, loss of control is a myth. The attendees served primarily as department chairs and/or as faculty members in colleges throughout Oregon. Their belief system is certainly reinforced across the curricula at their institutions, curricula that provides education for a large percentage of counselors entering the addiction-counseling field in this state. Only one voice opposed the view that LoC is a myth. Even William White in Slaying the Dragon seems to support this belief: The concepts of craving (cellular hunger for alcohol) and loss of control (the inability to limit the amount of alcohol consumed once drinking started) 23

25 UNVEILING THE ADDICTED HEART were similarly challenged in studies that failed to validate either the clear existence or the universality of these phenomena in alcoholics. Even the belief that the only option for alcoholics was complete abstinence from all alcohol was challenged in a series of studies revealing that a least a small percentage of alcoholics eventually achieved a state of sustained non-problematic drinking. 15 There does appear to be a number of studies that document the failure to produce in the laboratory the LoC experience. These studies, involving double blind procedures, examined the ability of alcohol to trigger a LoC reaction when a subject was given alcohol to consume (with or without their knowledge). LoC was not triggered in this setting. Let s assume that these studies are solid and sound in their methodology, analysis and conclusions. Is it sound scientific reasoning to conclude that, based upon the inability to create evidence of LoC in a laboratory setting, that LoC is a myth? Imagine a series of studies designed to examine the question, does God exist? Now imagine that these studies failed to produce affirmative evidence for God s existence. It would be ludicrous to use these experiments as proof that God is a myth. Scientifically speaking, the only conclusion that could be reached is that these experiments failed to produce evidence that support the hypothesis that God exists. Similarly, the failure to replicate LoC in the laboratory setting doesn t prove anything, including the existence or non-existence of the LoC phenomenon. Failure to provide evidence is not equivalent to proving non-existence. The arrogant and illogical attach- 24

26 INTRODUCTION ment to the belief that anything knowable is knowable only through available science is called scientism by Bruce Wilshire, the author of Wild Hunger. Scientism is a quasi-religious perspective that holds that all meaningful questions and answers are dependent upon science as the only reliable source of inquiry. 16 Lack of scientific understanding, or lack of technology that can measure or interact with a given phenomena, is used within scientism as proof for the affirmative. This type of application of science is a corruption used to press dogma, not further truth. Consider the scientism in the following analysis provided by the author of Alternatives to Abstinence: The above experiments (and numerous others) refute the idea that once an alcoholic takes a drink he will inevitably lose control over how much he consumes. This led one disease proponent to redefine what was meant by loss of control in this way: If an alcoholic has a drink, he can never be sure that he will be able to stop. Loss of control is thus seen as something intermittent and unpredictable. This definition defies scientific testing, as it has been impossible to identify the conditions under which loss of control will occur and those under which it will not occur. 17 Is it logical to jump to the conclusion that LoC is nonexistent simply because it appears to defy scientific testing or is currently elusive with available technology? Yet this is the dogma so many addiction-counseling priests are preaching. The silence created by the lack of 25

27 UNVEILING THE ADDICTED HEART shamanic voices cannot dismiss one truth: the voices of recovering addicts themselves. To state that LoC is a myth is to discount the stated experience of countless recovering addicts who have articulated their experience with LoC in the form We admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable. It is an arrogant and grandiose position to dismiss the reality as described by these recovering people unless there is evidence to the contrary. Scientism is dogma, not evidence. During the last 15 years of work with physicians in recovery (over 90% of my private practice clients are male physicians), I have seen again and again these physicians embrace their addiction through identification of their LoC and acceptance of their powerlessness. As physicians, these men are highly intelligent and strong willed and are trained to look at problems scientifically. They have gone to great lengths to control their use. If this group of men cannot learn to control their using, then who can? If this group of men is willing to claim their truth as involving being powerless over their addiction, on what basis can a distant laboratory endeavor be used to dismiss their experience and beliefs? The addiction-counseling priests have been dismantling the disease paradigm and replacing it with the moral model supported by the scientism, which illogically dismisses LoC. 26

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CASAA Research Division* UNDERSTANDING OF ALCOHOLISM SCALE (3T) William R. Miller & Theresa B. Moyers INSTRUCTIONS: For each of the following statements, rate the extent to which you agree or disagree,

IDDT Training: Section 4A Group Interventions Self Help Groups Why is group therapy important for dual diagnosis clients? Substance abuse often occurs in a social context Opportunity for social support

A Definition of Motivational Interviewing The definition of Motivational Interviewing (MI) has evolved and been refined since the original publications on its utility as an approach to behavior change.

INTERVENTION: REMOVING THE {ROADBLOCKS} TO RECOVERY TABLE OF {CONTENTS} HOW A TYPICAL INTERVENTION WORKS 4 GETTING EDUCATED ABOUT INTERVENTIONS 6 PROFESSIONAL VS. DIY INTERVENTION 7 FORMING THE INTERVENTION

I M NOT AN ADDICT How could I be an addict? My life is great. I live in a very good area of Los Angeles, drive a nice sports car, have a good job, pay all my bills, and have a wonderful family. This is